They are the words that strike fear into the heart of parents: “Mum/Dad, I really want a smartphone.” This summer many families will be wrestling with whether to buy a phone for their child, often as they enter secondary school.
Parents will be well aware of the risks — arguments over screen time, cyberbullying, toxic content, to name a few. But the peer pressure, social “fomo” (fear of missing out) and utility of the devices often mean that parents cave in.
Not all do: hundreds of thousands have joined the Smartphone Free Childhood movement, pledging to delay the decision until 14 or beyond. But at some stage the plunge is taken.
Families are then presented with what appears to be a binary choice: smart or dumb phone? Full access to the internet or just texting and calling? The gulf usually drives parents into the arms of Apple or Android. But a third option is appearing on the market: child-friendly smartphones.
In the past few months three versions have been launched that restrict access to the internet and social media but allow utility apps and offer controls that they say teenagers cannot skirt around. The Times gave the devices to one family to test out and see whether they offer children a safer way to engage in the digital world.
Laura Wyatt-Smith, 41, and her daughter Esmie, 11, tested the Pinwheel, HMD Fusion X1 and Sage phones over six weeks from early June.
Esmie at home in London
BETTY LAURA ZAPATA FOR THE TIMES
Wyatt-Smith has a personal and professional interest. As a parent she is faced with pressure to buy one, but she is also author of a new book: Screensaver: A Judgement-Free Guide to Your Child’s First Smartphone. As part of her research she spent a month in Silicon Valley looking at how tech executives deal with screen time and devices.
“I want children to have access to the best technology, but that has to be designed with children and parents in mind,” she said. “Parents have been set up to fail and I don’t think that the mainstream products in any way consider parents’ needs or wants.
“Adult phones say there are restrictions, but it takes a degree in technology to work out how to set them up and to make them foolproof for kids and I think they give you a false sense of security. So I’m really frustrated.”
Esmie has just left Year 6 at a primary school where about half her class has a smartphone. She recounted tales of the school writing to parents about arguments on group chats and children under the minimum age of 13 on TikTok not wanting to talk to their parents about issues with the platform in case they are removed from it.
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Wyatt-Smith said she was fully expecting the pressure for a phone to ramp up with secondary school, especially around group messaging, given its role in social life. “That’s my biggest concern,” she said.
The three new devices essentially reverse the present safety model for phones. Instead of enabling everything and then using an app to restrict things for children, the devices lock down internet browsing and social media apps in the operating system and enable parents to loosen restrictions as their children age.
HMD Fusion X1
The HMD Fusion X1 is the first device to come out of the Better Phone Project, a collaboration with parents and the manufacturer, Human Mobile Devices, which makes Nokia phones. The Android phone can be controlled by parents using the Xplora Guardian app.
The Fusion X1 is the most-price friendly of the trio at £229, plus a £5 monthly subscription to the Guardian app. It will soon have SafeToNet software built in that detects and blocks toxic content before it reaches the phone.
This was Esmie’s favourite phone, although her mother had a couple of issues with it. She couldn’t turn off the geolocation alert, which tells parents when their kids leave “safe zones”.
“I don’t want to track my child,” Wyatt-Smith said (although many parents do). She was a fan of the ability to control Esmie’s contacts, but didn’t like a feature that “gamified” exercise for Esmie. “I don’t like the concept of presenting physical exercise as a chore that you must undertake in order to get digital rewards,” she added.
★★★★☆
Pinwheel
The US company Pinwheel gives the option of buying a Samsung or Google Pixel phone with a £13.99 monthly subscription, which enables parents to slowly release apps and features according to the child. Wyatt-Smith liked the vetting and classification of apps. “You could be guided in your choices about what you permitted,” she said.
The AI-powered summary of Esmie’s text messages was also useful. “If a parent wanted to review the content of their child’s messaging without going through it all, they’ve got this ability to summarise the key points, which is quite clever,” Wyatt-Smith said.
A child version of an AI chatbot provided by Pinwheel did suggest it was a real person, which was troubling. All the Android phones felt too big for Esmie, her mother said: “They just looked extraordinarily big in her tiny hands.”
★★★★☆
Sage
Sage is the only child-friendly iPhone so far. Wyatt-Smith, an Apple user, liked the ease of set-up and the smaller size. It comes with some apps such as Google Maps, Monzo and Spotify, but has no social media or internet browsing by default. Wyatt-Smith wasn’t keen on the music-streaming service being there given it hosts some explicit content.
Sage leases the phone at a hefty £99.95 a month, a price that Wyatt-Smith called “extraordinary” and off-putting for most parents. The US company that produces it says screen time on the device is between 15 minutes and an hour per day, far below the average. It also has “sext” filtering, explicit-image detection and factory reset prevention.
★★★☆☆
The verdict
While each device had its pros and cons, Wyatt-Smith noticed Esmie being drawn into all three. “They all have front-facing selfie cameras, which I have mixed feelings about, because the posing started immediately,” she said.
“All of these options are bright, colourful interfaces which suck you in and capture your attention, and I did have to be more alert to boundaries around usage.”
Wyatt-Smith is not ready to buy Esmie a phone yet, but said she was “really excited” about these new entrants on the market and would choose either the Pinwheel or Fusion X1.
“I would definitely buy one of these hybrid phones for my child when she’s a little bit older. I firmly believe that the best way for a child to learn how to use the phones is to start with the most simple option available and then to progressively add responsibility. We have to learn to live with technology, not reject it, because it is the future.”